I wanted to make a minor change to the electricity arrangements in my
garage.

Fortunately it has it's own distribution box with ELCB and MCBs. It can
take 5 units on a DIN rail.

The box is the usual sort of proper housing, with a good IP rating and
is clearly the right sort of item for the job, but I see that when it
was wired up, there appeared to be no built-in terminal blocks. The
common connections for earths and neutrals were all achieved by means
of standard nylon barrier strips.

Is this normal practice ?

I'd be quite happy swapping them for the correct item, but upon
trawling through the CPC catalogue, I can't see the sort of thing that
I've encountered supplied with the distribution boxes I've bought in
the past.

You know the sort of thing, half a dozen terminals in a single row, all
connected together. You have one for the neutral and another for the
earth.

Where can they be obtained on their own ?

wrote:
I wanted to make a minor change to the electricity arrangements in my
garage.

Fortunately it has it's own distribution box with ELCB and MCBs. It can
take 5 units on a DIN rail.

The box is the usual sort of proper housing, with a good IP rating and
is clearly the right sort of item for the job, but I see that when it
was wired up, there appeared to be no built-in terminal blocks. The
common connections for earths and neutrals were all achieved by means
of standard nylon barrier strips.

Is this normal practice ?

I'd be quite happy swapping them for the correct item, but upon
trawling through the CPC catalogue, I can't see the sort of thing that
I've encountered supplied with the distribution boxes I've bought in
the past.

You know the sort of thing, half a dozen terminals in a single row, all
connected together. You have one for the neutral and another for the
earth.

Where can they be obtained on their own ?

earth blocks, screwfix.com 12386 and 11385. 89p/=A31.65.

NT

wrote in message
oups.com...
wrote:
I wanted to make a minor change to the electricity arrangements in my
garage.

Fortunately it has it's own distribution box with ELCB and MCBs. It can
take 5 units on a DIN rail.

The box is the usual sort of proper housing, with a good IP rating and
is clearly the right sort of item for the job, but I see that when it
was wired up, there appeared to be no built-in terminal blocks. The
common connections for earths and neutrals were all achieved by means
of standard nylon barrier strips.

Is this normal practice ?

I'd be quite happy swapping them for the correct item, but upon
trawling through the CPC catalogue, I can't see the sort of thing that
I've encountered supplied with the distribution boxes I've bought in
the past.

You know the sort of thing, half a dozen terminals in a single row, all
connected together. You have one for the neutral and another for the
earth.

Where can they be obtained on their own ?

earth blocks, screwfix.com 12386 and 11385. 89p/£1.65.

NT

Do you get the insulated stand-off's with the neutral bar as well? I don't
see them on the site.

On 14 Jun 2005 12:50:40 -0700, wrote:

I wanted to make a minor change to the electricity arrangements in my
garage.

Fortunately it has it's own distribution box with ELCB and MCBs. It can
take 5 units on a DIN rail.

The box is the usual sort of proper housing, with a good IP rating and
is clearly the right sort of item for the job, but I see that when it
was wired up, there appeared to be no built-in terminal blocks. The
common connections for earths and neutrals were all achieved by means
of standard nylon barrier strips.

Is this normal practice ?

Yes. Very common.

I'd be quite happy swapping them for the correct item, but upon
trawling through the CPC catalogue, I can't see the sort of thing that
I've encountered supplied with the distribution boxes I've bought in
the past.

You know the sort of thing, half a dozen terminals in a single row, all
connected together. You have one for the neutral and another for the
earth.

Where can they be obtained on their own ?

You can make them up with suitable sized chock-block connectors, as
in use one side as a common bus bar made up of suitable size insulated
wire, while the other side of the chock-block is for connecting to the
load.

J

BigWallop wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com.

earth blocks, screwfix.com 12386 and 11385. 89p/=A31.65.

Do you get the insulated stand-off's with the neutral bar as well? I don=
't
see them on the site.

I dont know where to get those either, unless you use standard choc
blocks. Or a jbox even? Why would you need them, given that the CU has
all the necessary connections? Unless youre putting wads of cables into
each MCB way?

NT

wrote:

You know the sort of thing, half a dozen terminals in a single row, all
connected together. You have one for the neutral and another for the
earth.

Where can they be obtained on their own ?

The most-pukka thing to use goes under the name of 'commoning block'. RS
sell them - to see what I'm babbling on about, pop over to rswww.com and
type 388-6469 into the 'search' field - that's their partnum for a 5-way
60A-rated instance. Being RS, they sell them in packs of 10 for 12.50 a
pack (+VAT, +post if you don't have an account).

HTH, Stefek

Stefek said
The most-pukka thing to use goes under the name of 'commoning block'. RS
sell them ......

Thanks - that's exactly what I was looking for.

Can't imagine how I missed it in the RS catalogue.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Stefek said
The most-pukka thing to use goes under the name of 'commoning block'. RS
sell them ......

Thanks - that's exactly what I was looking for.

Can't imagine how I missed it in the RS catalogue.

Perhaps you were attempting to find it on their website :-)

wrote:

Thanks - that's exactly what I was looking for.

Can't imagine how I missed it in the RS catalogue.

Well, there's an 'undred thousand produx in there, the organisation is a
tad idiosyncratic, and the website's not all that welcoming for browsing
(since their deep hierarchical organisation has various nodes in it
which are just Weird). There's stuff I *know* they sell which I can only
ever find with a struggle: Aphel Mains Multiple Units are my particular
bugbear in the 'it's there *somewhere*' department. Now that I've burned
into my head the name of the manufacturer, I can find it (and I *swear*
RS used to call 'em Mains Multiple Units, but now they have the more
logical? name of 'Modular Mains Distribution Units'. But if all you have
is 'those well-made mains block things which you can daisychain with
dedicated 'back-plane' connectors, which you can also get little tee
blocks for' - you can spend 10 minutes or more searching at rswww.

In similar vein, I have physical instances of the commoning blocks to
hand (well, lurking in a parts bin somewhere not too far away), know I
bought them from RS, and still had the name 'commoning block' in my
head. If all you have is 'those blocks you use for joining multiple
cables together neatly', you're left in RS catsearch hell. Sometimes,
keeping a hardcopy of the RS catalogue in close reading reach of the
porcelain throne is the best you can do ;-)

Stefek